


A Man's Best Friend

by Vivian Moon (vivian_moon)



Category: Colbert Report FPF, Fake News FPF
Genre: Bisexuality, Catholicism, Coming Out, Denial, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Loneliness, M/M, Repression, Sexual Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 13:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7173122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivian_moon/pseuds/Vivian%20Moon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon reaches out to Stephen after the death of his beloved dog Gipper, and things begin to change for both of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction set within the world of the Colbert Report TV show, and any names shared by real people refer to their fictional character counterparts in that world. Depictions in this story are not intended to represent anyone's genuine opinions or real-life actions.
> 
> Set in a vaguely AU-ish 2008 with fictional TDS/TCR episodes and an OC as a guest. This version of "Jon" is childless and divorced.

Getting distraught phonecalls from Stephen outside of their filming days wasn't exactly unusual. In fact, Jon started to get nervous when his weekends _weren't_ punctuated by at least one call demanding he stop news from happening on Saturdays or requiring him to talk Stephen down from the conviction that innocent everyday objects were conspiring to make him gay.

This one, though, was a little different.

"Stephen, what's wrong?" Jon asked patiently, after he'd awkwardly waited out the initial round of blubbering.

"It's Gipper," Stephen wailed. "He's dead!"

"Uh..." Jon was contemplating how to break it to him that Reagan had been dead for a while now, actually, when he caught on. "Oh, God, Stephen, your dog died?" His heart genuinely sank. "I'm so sorry." Losing any pet was always awful, even if it couldn't have been all that unexpected at Gipper's advanced age.

To anyone but Stephen, it seemed. "He was just a puppy - not even sixteen years old!" The choked little sniffle broke Jon's heart. Sometimes it was hard not to react to Stephen like the small child set adrift in a baffling adult world that he frequently seemed.

"Where are you, are you at home?" Jon asked, already searching the apartment for his keys. "You want me to come over?

Stephen immediately reverted to his stern and manly TV pundit voice. "That's hardly necessary, Jon. I'm an adult man, I'm perfectly capable of dealing with this by myself." His voice cracked on the last word.

Jon did him the courtesy of pretending not to notice. "I know you can, Stephen," he said soothingly. "I'd just like to be there for you in your time of, uh..." he fished for a term that didn't imply anything about Stephen's emotional state, "...hardship."

Stephen sniffed. "Well, Jon, if it's the really only way you have of making yourself feel useful, I suppose I can put up with the imposition."

That stung a little, even though he knew it was just Stephen's typical self-centred defensiveness. The fact was, Jon probably did depend more than he should on the boost that he got from being the one Stephen called during his many minor crises. But it wasn't as if there was anyone else out there who needed him. He'd always had vague intentions of being a family man by now, but he guessed those alone weren't enough to hold a marriage together past the honeymoon period. His friendship with Stephen had been a major bone of contention by the end, his wife adamant that Stephen's views were appalling and he took advantage of Jon; Jon's fumbling attempts to articulate the protectiveness he felt toward the fragile, childlike man beneath the thin veneer of posturing had only convinced her that he was an insecure doormat who'd put up with anything to have a friend.

On his way over to Stephen's now for a surely thankless effort at comforting him through the grief he'd never even admit that he felt, it was hard to really say that she'd been wrong.

#

Stephen's place was in kind of a state, and not just due to the evidence it had recently contained an ailing dog. The front room was scattered with empty cartons of Americone Dream and bottles of Bud Light Lime - and, for some unknown reason, piles of wrestling magazines - and bore evidence of the kind of inept domestic flailing that suggested Stephen's staff hadn't been around for a while, and he didn't have anyone else prepared to pick up after him either.

"Where are Lorraine and the kids?" Jon had to ask.

Stephen looked shifty. "They're visiting her mother. Jon, that woman really loves her grandchildren," he said. "The number of times she called, begging Lorraine to come back home and take the children with her - she even sent them money for plane tickets."

Jon decided it would be unkind to ask exactly when they were supposed to be coming back. "Do they know about Gipper?" he asked instead.

Stephen's face crumpled. "No!" he wailed. "How can I possibly break this to them, Jon? I told them Gipper would live seven times as long as a human, just like all dogs do."

Jon shrugged awkwardly. Stephen's daughter was already off at college by now, but his sons were younger, seven and ten; Jon was no expert on what children that age were emotionally ready for, but it was a fair bet that Stephen's hadn't had much exposure to hard facts. "Well, you could, uh, always go with the tried and tested method of telling them that Gipper went off to live on a nice farm upstate," he suggested.

Stephen looked appalled. "Now, that's just cruel," he said. "When I was a kid, my dog Shasta abandoned me to go and live on a farm without so much as a lick goodbye - I guess even after all those happy years we had together, I just didn't mean as much to her as the chance to chase rabbits. And God knows how long she must have been faking that degenerative hip disease. The day before she left, I could have sworn that she could barely even get up to greet me, and... oh. Oh, I see." He sank down to sit abruptly on the edge of the couch, staring off into the middle distance.

If Jon was ill-equipped to handle this situation with kids, he had even less idea what to do with Stephen, who tended to react unpredictably to things at the best of times. Jon gave him a hesitant pat on the shoulder. "Uh... sorry you had to find it out this way, buddy," he said. "It's hard, I know." Even if most people managed to have this revelation a good few decades earlier.

Stephen looked up at him with dazed eyes. "My parents _lied_ to me," he said. "Why would they _lie_?" He grabbed Jon by the shoulders, wild-eyed. "What _else_ were they lying about? Maybe Goldy the goldfish didn't really escape into the creek! Maybe that time I caught Dad with the babysitter he wasn't really helping her get chewing gum unstuck from her back teeth and out of her bra!" He frowned distractedly. "Though I don't see what else they could have been doing."

Jon decided not to touch that. "Uh, Stephen... sometimes parents just decide to tell their children a simplified story instead of the truth because they're not sure that they're old enough to understand," he said. "They don't mean any harm by it."

"Not _my_ parents, Jon," Stephen insisted. "Everything they told me was the absolute truth! Just like every line in the Bible is God's literal word. They told me so. They..." he faltered a little as the implications sank in, "uh... they... told me."

His expression went through a brief moment of wobbling uncertainty before he shook it off and jumped back up. "Oh, I see your game now, Stewart!" he barked. "You came here hoping to find me in a weakened, vulnerable state - thought I'd be down on my knees, helpless to prevent you from shoving your bloated liberal agenda down my gagging throat. Well, think again! This good Catholic boy isn't about swallow a bitter mouthful of liberal juice squeezed from America's hard-working businessmen."

"Uh... okay," Jon said, somewhat stunned by that flood of imagery. "Stephen, I really didn't-"

"Honour thy father and mother, Jon!" Stephen said, wagging a finger at him. "By which I mean honour _my_ father and mother. They did right by me! I have no memory of anything bad enough for me to need to repress it." He gestured to his head. "And believe me, there's plenty of room in here for more childhood memories with all of those blank spots. Just because some things they told me might turn out to be lies doesn't mean they weren't completely true. If you think you can lure me away from my gut knowledge with your precious facts, then think again."

There was no reasoning with Stephen when he got like this. Or at most other times, to be honest. Jon held up his hands. "Stephen, I'm sure your parents handled the death of your dog the best way that they could," he said placatingly. "I mean, how old were you at the time?"

"Fifteen years old, Jon," Stephen said, eyebrows crunching seriously. "Still just a boy, making my way in a man's world, taking my first cautious ventures in the world of chest hair."

Jon faltered a little. "Right. So, uh... young." Relatively. By some reckonings. "And your sons are even younger, so... what do you think you're going to tell them?"

"My children deserve nothing less than the cold, hard truth, Jon!" Stephen insisted, puffing his chest. "Which is why I'm going to tell them that Gipper had to go to heaven because Jesus wanted the best, most well-trained, patriotic dog in the world." By the end his posture had deflated, and that little lip wobble was back.

"Well, I'm sure they'll appreciate that." In the unlikely event that they bought it. He hesitated, and then stepped forward to give Stephen a brief hug.

Or one that would have been brief, if Stephen hadn't immediately clung on like a baby monkey. Jon started to feel awkward after a few seconds, but Stephen only tightened his grip on the back of his T-shirt when he tried to pull away. He surrendered and let his head fall forward against Stephen's shoulder.

Once even the sense of embarrassment and discomfort began to fade, the embrace was actually kind of nice. Stephen smelled pleasantly of some kind of musky cologne that probably cost more than the whole of Jon's wardrobe, and he was warm and solid - not to mention surprisingly comfortable to lean on. "Wow, your suits really are nice," he said.

"I know," Stephen said dreamily against his shoulder. Then he pulled back and adopted a familiar suspicious squint. "Jon, you're getting perilously close to furthering the homosexual agenda with this kind of behaviour," he warned. "I know my suits are irresistible, but please," he held up a hand, "try to contain yourself."

Jon forbore from pointing out that it was Stephen who'd refused to let _him_ go. "Right. I'm sorry," he said, stepping back. He was dismayed to realise that he actually missed the contact. Damn, his life had come to a sad point if he was relying on Stephen for a dose of human warmth.

For obvious reasons. "You could stand to take some more care with your own appearance, Jon," Stephen said, eyeing Jon's comfortable outfit of T-shirt and sweatpants with disdain. "My reputation for being firm but fair with the city's thieving, grasping homeless will take a blow if people think I'm entertaining hobos. How will they know that you're a moderately wealthy and successful news anchor on basic cable if you don't dress for it outside work?"

That was actually part of the point - it always made him uncomfortable to be recognised, to have people come up and talk to him like they thought he was doing something important instead of just reading his lines on Influence Central's dorky little 'alternative news' show that could never quite decide if it was an ironic critique of glossy big-budget news programs or genuinely trying to compete with them. But he knew Stephen would never understand the concept of _not_ wanting to bask in public adulation at every opportunity. Jon figured that if you averaged the two of them you'd probably get a healthy, appropriate reaction to a compliment.

Maybe that was why he stayed friends with Stephen despite all the odds. If anything, Stephen was more screwed up than he was, but in completely opposite ways, so that instead of feeding each other's neuroses they pulled each other back toward normal.

Not that Stephen would ever admit to needing or wanting to change.

"If you could curse loudly about how I'm so unkind to hobos on your way out, that would be great," he said. He held up a hand as Jon moved toward the door. "Oh, and make sure that you leave the back way, would you? Good man."

#

For all Stephen seemed to have bounced back with his usual speed, Jon couldn't help but worry about him. Stephen was barely emotionally equipped to deal with something like losing a pet at the best of times - and if Jon's suspicions about the absence of his wife and kids were true, this probably wasn't the best of times.

There were clues to his emotional state during the week's shows - such as the fact he'd dedicated an entire episode to "Stephen Colbert's Who's A Good Dog Then: America's Faithful Four-Legged Friends" and broke down crying twice in the middle of it, plus a rant about gay marriage that turned into a highly personal diatribe about people who threw away thirty years of "not completely unhappy marriage" just because their demands were repeatedly unmet. He spent the whole of Thursday's check-in binge-eating Doritos and refused to answer Jon's efforts to prompt a response with any more than depressed monosyllables.

Jon spent more of Friday and Saturday than he would admit waiting for one of Stephen's usual panicked calls, just to save him from dwelling on melodramatic imaginings that, given that it _was_ Stephen, could never be entirely ruled out. By Saturday afternoon the embarrassment of feeling like a teenager waiting on a call from a girl had gotten stronger than the sense he'd be imposing if he made the call himself, and he picked up the phone.

"Uh, hey, Stephen, I was wondering if you maybe wanted to grab a pizza or something later." He was aiming for casual, but considering he didn't usually call up out of the blue like this he wasn't sure how well he managed it. Jon got on fine with most of his work colleagues, but he always hesitated to presume too much of a friendship outside work - partly because he worried they'd feel pressured to hang out with him because he was the boss, partly because of that lingering middle-school fear that just because the other kids were willing to sit with him at lunch didn't mean they wouldn't laugh in his face if he invited them to come over and play.

Yeah, so maybe he should up his number of sessions with his therapist.

Though Stephen always had a way of making him feel well-adjusted. "Is this a date, Jon?" he said suspiciously. "Are you _firing_ me? Is this a date you're ordering me to go on or else you're firing me? Because firstly, I will not stand for this terrible harassment, and secondly, I have nothing to wear!"

"It's just pizza, Stephen," he said patiently.

"Really, Jon? Really?" he said weightily. "Because I seem to recall that's what you said on election day, right before you launched your perverted assault on my lips."

Oh, yeah - that whole thing where they'd both reached for the same slice of pizza had gotten a little weird for a moment there. But these things happened when you were both punchy from hours of election coverage and _really_ didn't want to be the one to have to relinquish your grip on the last piece of delicious, delicious pizza.

"Just pizza, I promise," he said. "No funny business."

"Fine. Then I suppose I'll rescue you from another sad and lonely night eating takeout in your underwear, drunkenly crying over pet insurance commercials and wondering where your life went so wrong." He coughed. "Not that I have any idea what that would be like."

The sad thing was that aside from the commercials, he wasn't even that far off.

#

Pizza went surprisingly well, for values of 'well' that adjusted for Stephen. They had a vigorous debate over whether Bush was going to be reelected, Stephen undaunted by the minor technicality that he couldn't run and wasn't trying to, but that was par for the course, and more harmlessly absurd than some of his other pet subjects. There was a minor crisis over the fact the pizza place was clearly out to destroy America by not offering Americone Dream, but Jon successfully mollified Stephen by convincing him the staff had probably been helpless to stop themselves eating it as soon as they got any in. It might even have been true - that stuff was like crack.

All in all, it was a remarkably nice evening, and much better than the one Jon would otherwise have had planned, sitting at home getting angry at the news and feeling sorry for himself.

"This was good. We should do this again," he said as they left the pizza place. Maybe they could make it a regular thing.

Stephen's face went through a rapid cycle of expressions from over-eager delight to hastily smoothed out calm. "I'll have my PA see if she can pencil you in," he said.

Jon frowned a little at that. "Stephen, I'm fairly sure that you don't have a PA."

"No? Then who the hell do I keep sending out to collect my laundry?"

Jon made a mental note to have the HR guys check on the status of Stephen's unpaid interns. Again.

Still, inevitable roadbumps aside, he felt like he'd done a good thing by inviting Stephen, and gotten himself out of the house in the bargain. He explained as much to his therapist at their regular session.

"See? You always said I should make more playdates with people from work, so here I am, five years later, taking your advice," he said. "Give me another five, and maybe I'll try that 'find a nice girl and ask if she wants to go for coffee' thing." He held up his hands. "Although maybe not, because that sounds scary."

Cracking self-deprecating jokes to make sure his therapist understood he knew he was a loser was probably evidence of something. Like the fact he needed therapy.

Helen gave him her usual clear, calm look through her glasses. Jon fidgeted in his inoffensively neutral chair, looking at the inoffensively neutral walls, and wished he had a cigarette. He'd be way less nervous at these sessions if she'd just laugh at his dumb jokes instead of taking what he said seriously.

"So, are you thinking of making these evenings out with Stephen a regular event?" she asked.

"Uh, I guess maybe?" he said with a shrug, reluctant to make any solid commitment that she'd probably check up on. "I mean, we're not going steady or anything. He hasn't even asked me to the prom!" Not so much as a courtesy smile. Tough crowd. He tried to dig out the more serious answer that she was clearly waiting for. "He... I'm worried about him," he admitted. "Stephen..." How did you even begin to define Stephen? "Stephen doesn't cope with change well." He didn't cope with anything well.

"So you see it as a charitable gesture?" she asked, cocking her head.

"I... no," he said, slightly injured. "I mean, Stephen's... he's a good friend." Quite possibly Jon's best, but even he had to admit that idea was depressing. Stephen _did_ more or less return the sentiment, Jon was relatively sure, but he was also blissfully oblivious to other people's feelings and priorities, not to mention prone to wild accusations and even wilder overreactions.

Helen folded her hands a way he'd come to associate with insights into his psyche that he'd rather not have. "Do you think you find it easier to reach out to a friend when you're doing it for them instead of you?" she said.

The trouble with going to an analyst, he reflected, was that they did have a horrible tendency to analyse you.

#

Maybe his therapist was right that their meet-ups for pizza were as much for his own sake as Stephen's, because Jon had to admit they soon became the highlight of his week. He'd missed the chance to just hang out and talk about things with Stephen; they still had the tosses, of course, but that wasn't the same as dropping by his office when he'd worked on the Daily Show. Since Stephen had gotten the Report he'd been both busier and further away, and it was harder to find opportunities to show up just to shoot the breeze.

The fact was that he honestly _liked_ Stephen - not so much the blowhard conservative pundit who decried his liberal views, but that other inner man Stephen frequently forgot that he wasn't supposed to be. It was clear he'd been indoctrinated with rules of behaviour that he earnestly believed were right and true - but whatever family or past mentors were responsible had reckoned without his natural distractability, woeful lack of willpower, and complete inability to keep his inner monologue on the inside.

He'd defend to the death the idea that men shouldn't cry, but forget to live by it as soon as he got upset. He would preach along to the most warped, reductive takes on his religion, then when the rehearsed talking points ran out start absent-mindedly filling in from a much greater depth of theological knowledge. He stubbornly insisted that he didn't read books, but woe betide anyone who mixed up their elves from some obscure branch of Tolkien's mythology. It was like watching a small child play dress-up, fiercely dedicated to living the role, yet oblivious to how often the performance lapsed as soon as something else grabbed his attention.

Jon still lived in hope that maybe someday, one day, he'd convince Stephen that it really was okay to be that rather sweet and geeky, emotional man he thought he was keeping so well suppressed.

In the meantime, well, they argued a lot, but at least Stephen's positions were usually entertainingly absurd instead of just infuriating. It was hard to fully resent a man's dumbass opinion on healthcare or human rights when he was just as earnestly convinced that baby carrots were making him gay.

So Jon was genuinely disappointed when he dropped by the Report offices before Thursday's shows and discovered that their weekly date was off.

"I have the children this weekend," Stephen said, then stiffened, adopting a slightly hunted look. "As I do every weekend, befitting my role in our traditional nuclear family. Nucular family," he corrected to match Bush's pronunciation. "Everyone knows that the true American family is made up of a mother, a father, and one child for every time you're too drunk to remember the rhythm method. Is it four-four time or three-four? I always get confused."

Jon politely ignored the slip-up, holding up his hands. "Oh, well, I don't want to intrude," he said. He was fairly sure Stephen hadn't spent enough time with his kids even before whatever was going on with his marriage.

"No, well, who would?" Stephen said. "It's a madhouse, Jon! It's anarchy. They have no respect for the sacred institution of taco night since they picked up all these exotic tastes living - vacationing! - in Wisconsin. That's practically Canada! They eat cheese curds up there! I don't even know what curds are, but according to my intel from nursery rhymes, they attract spiders. And now my own children turn their noses up at wholesome all-American cuisine like grits. It's like I don't even know them anymore!" He covered his face with his hands as if about to weep.

On the other hand, maybe it wouldn't be so much an intrusion as mission of mercy. "Well, you know, uh, I could always bring some pizza over to your place," he suggested. All kids liked pizza, right? Surely even Stephen's.

Stephen looked up with wide, awed eyes, distress forgotten. "You're offering to be my pizza boy?" he said.

"Uh... I guess," Jon said. If you really wanted to put it that way.

"Will you wear the uniform?" he asked eagerly.

"I don't think that's strictly necessary, no," he said.

"Oh." Stephen looked almost disappointed. "What about payment?" he asked.

"You don't need to pay me money for bringing the food, Stephen," Jon said patiently. The man really was just used to interacting with employees and delivery boys.

"Right, right," he said, nodding with a distant look on his face. "So I'll have to find... some other form of compensation."

That wasn't really necessary either, but who was he to stop Stephen in the middle of a rare altruistic thought? "Uh, sure," he said absently. "So... should I bring extra pepperoni?" Usually a pretty safe choice.

He must have caught Stephen in a hungry mood, because he was practically drooling as he leaned closer. "Pepperoni..." he said dreamily. "Yes, definitely lots of hot, spicy meat..."

"Will your kids eat spicy food?" Jon said dubiously.

"What?" Stephen started at him blankly for a moment, then abruptly recoiled. "Oh, the kids! Pizza... for the kids. Yes, they'll eat... that." Without further warning he shoved his chair back from the desk and spun it round. "I have to take my pre-show shower now!" he announced in an oddly high voice, and bolted for the door.

Jon reflexively looked at his watch, though it wasn't even time for him to get ready for _his_ show yet. "Stephen, it's still-"

The door slammed behind him, leaving Jon to meet the eyes of the giant-sized Colbert poster raising a stern eyebrow on the back of it.

"You are one very strange man," he told it.

Yet somehow he was looking forward to Saturday anyway.

#

Jon found himself oddly nervous at the idea of spending an evening with Stephen's kids. He'd met them before, at various Daily Show events, but they'd been much younger then, and Stephen's wife had usually taken them home early while Stephen got belligerently drunk after some hissed argument in a corner.

He even seriously considered getting dressed up, before a brief glance through his wardrobe forced him to concede that he _had_ no actual smart clothes aside from his work suits. He settled for a T-shirt and khakis, and after a moment of indecision, added his old leather jacket to the ensemble. Maybe Stephen's kids were still young and sheltered enough to think that was cool.

...Oh, God, please just don't let him be the embarrassing uncle who tried too hard. Anything but that.

In the end he was glad he hadn't gone with the momentary work suit madness, since it turned out Stephen had dressed down for the occasion - meaning he looked like he'd stepped right from the pages of a catalogue aimed at people who owned sailboats. Jon was fairly sure that soft-looking cream sweater Stephen was wearing was worth more than his own best suits.

He proffered the pizza. "Uh, I brought extra pepperoni and... a bunch of other things." Probably more food than strictly necessary, but Stephen hadn't exactly been clear about what the kids would eat, and also, could there ever be such a thing as too much leftover pizza?

It was just as well there wasn't, since it turned out only Stephen's two sons would be joining them to eat. "Not that it matters, if my daughter would rather stay at college with her so-called friends than come home and see her father for one weekend," Stephen said in a brittle voice, pressing his fist to his mouth to disguise the display of emotion. "It's not as if... there's any reason... for it to be rare for me to see my children all together..." He bit down on his knuckle.

Jon cast about for a quick subject change before he could break into actual sobs. "So, uh, are the boys upstairs?"

Stephen snapped out if it as if nothing had happened. "Out in the yard. I kicked them out of the house because they can't stop throwing their damn softballs at everything - those things are not soft, Jon! Not if you get one in the ear. Or if your portrait gets one in the ear." He stopped to pat the nearest painting consolingly. "Children are a menace," he said, fixing Jon with a serious stare. "They're the first wave of the assault on us from the future! And you know what happens to people in science fiction movies."

"Right." Jon was well-practised at ignoring anything Stephen said that didn't sound like it was going to be an immediate threat to life and limb. "Hey, you think the kids would want to eat outside?" It was still light out and relatively warm, and it had been a while since he'd visited someone who had an actual house with its own yard, not just an apartment.

Though, to be fair, it had been a while since he'd visited anybody. Meals and parties at people's homes always felt like a couple thing, and inviting the divorced guy who didn't get out much always had that faint whiff of pity. But it didn't feel like that with Stephen - maybe because, however different their circumstances, Stephen's efforts at maintaining a functional domestic life still involved a certain spirit of baffled flailing he couldn't help but identify with.

"Sure, whatever," Stephen said dismissively. "They'd hang upside-down from trees and eat with their feet if you let them. That's how I know evolution is false - the generations are not becoming _less_ monkey-like over time, Jon." He adjusted his glasses. "You know, some so-called expert once claimed that if a family takes the time to sit down and eat together at the table every night when the kids are young, they'll have those table manners all their lives - well, _that_ was a complete con. All that money I paid the housekeeper to eat with them was clearly just wasted. But sure, bring the pizza out. I'll see if I can get them to put it in their mouths and not just smear it all over the landscape like they usually do."

"I'm sure they've probably outgrown that stage by now," Jon said, juggling his excess of takeout to try and get the door without any assistance from Stephen.

"Really?" Stephen frowned quizzically. "Huh, maybe. The little one _has_ gotten taller since he last did that 'spitting up peas' thing."

Jon had to wonder, somewhat disloyally, if this apparent separation from his wife might not actually result in Stephen spending more time with his children than he had in years.

Unlike Stephen, he actually had a legitimate excuse to be startled by how much the boys had changed from the vague image of them that he carried in his head. Alex was ten now, shaggy-haired and starting to show a shape to his face that looked like his father's; John Paul's resemblance was even stronger, thanks to the glasses and the fact he was still young enough to put up with his hair being combed into tidy submission. The Tek Janssen and Steagle Colbeagle T-shirts only added to the impression that Stephen had somehow gotten his hands on some back-alley cloning technology. Though at least they weren't in miniature suits.

The childishly unrestrained enthusiasm with which they greeted the arrival of pizza also reminded him of Stephen - and of the fact that he actually quite liked kids, though the responsibility of raising any of his own had always seemed moderately terrifying.

Not that Stephen seemed to feel the weight. "Um, maybe you guys should wash your hands first?" Jon suggested tentatively, when their father showed no sign of stopping them from digging straight into the food.

"Uh, what he said," Stephen said with a vague gesture toward the house, already starting on the pizza without waiting for the kids.

He didn't seem to think it was his job to engage the boys in conversation while they ate, either, leaving Jon struggling for topics he could talk about with two conservatively raised pre-teens. Comedy had always been his safe retreat when situations got awkward, but most of his jokes either involved politics or copious references to masturbation and use of the word 'fuck'.

"So, uh, how are you guys enjoying school?" he asked, and winced at himself. Could he be any more of a lame adult?

"We made comics telling the story of Easter," John Paul told him eagerly. "I drew Jesus fighting off the Easter Bunny and his army of evil atheists in his attack helicopter."

"Huh," Jon said reflectively as he chewed his pizza. "Guess I missed that part of the Jesus story, going to Jew school."

"My new school sucks," Alex said, squishing his slice of pizza and scowling down at it in a precursor to teenage moodiness. Stephen tensed slightly at this blow to what he seemed to think was a cunning pretence that his wife and kids still lived at home with him.

Jon politely stepped round any awkward questions. "Really? Well, new schools can be hard," he said. "It takes a while to settle in." And sometimes you never did, but now was not the time to hit the kids with harsh life lessons from his own youthful miseries. "Isn't there anything you like about it?"

A sulky shrug, still looking down, then finally he reluctantly conceded, "We do soccer. Soccer's okay."

Stephen's eyebrows descended like thunderclouds. "Soccer? What kind of liberal-run, effeminate-haired pit of Europhiles is she sending you to?" he demanded. "My children should be learning proper, manly American sports, like hacky sack."

"Hey, I used to play soccer in college," Jon interjected before things could get nasty. "How about we have a quick game after the pizza?" It was decades since he'd been in sporting shape - or much able to get up and run about after a meal - but he was fairly confident he could still take on a pair of pre-teen kids.

"I don't kick things, Jon," Stephen informed him seriously. "It's bad for my pedicure."

"Then you can be the referee," Jon suggested. He wasn't sure Stephen even owned any clothes suitable for running around in, though he did have that slightly scary enthusiasm for short-shorts.

Stephen shot him a coy sidelong look, halfway to being seduced into it but playing it cool. "I _am_ good at judging things," he allowed.

"Sure." He shrugged. "I mean, if you-"

"All right, all right, I'll do it!" Stephen held up a hand to shush him. "Please. No more of this shameless begging."

The kids' level of enthusiasm for even this minor involvement in their game made Jon feel slightly sad. He was sure Stephen meant well, but it was painfully clear that he had no idea what to do with his own children. Of course, having grown up as the youngest of eleven in a family with rigid views on gender roles, he probably had pretty different ideas on how much paternal attention a child could expect when not actively setting things on fire. Well, maybe this separation from his wife would give him the nudge he needed to become a more hands-on dad before it was too late, and it couldn't hurt for Jon to encourage that along.

Much as he'd anticipated, Stephen forgot that he was supposed to have a disdain for soccer as soon as he was actively involved in it. He had no functional understanding of the rules, but didn't let that stop him from being a shamelessly biased referee, heckling Jon, encouraging the kids to commit any number of fouls, and cheering them on for anything up to and including being excellent specimens of humanity from superior family stock. He puffed up when the boys giggled at his excitedly clueless commentary and extended cries of, "Gooooooal!", and in general both parties seemed to be mutually delighted at how much attention they were getting from each other.

It was also rather sweet that Stephen seemed to accept without question that the boys were scoring due to their superior athletic prowess rather than Jon not trying all that hard to stop them. At least, Jon preferred that interpretation to the thought that maybe he was just so obviously unfit it seemed reasonable for a seven-year-old to be kicking his ass.

Though he did have to admit the wheezing set in a bit sooner than he might have liked. He was fairly sure working himself into an asthma attack would counteract any potential cool points he might have won with the kids, so he declared their latest goal to be too much of a lead to come back from, and graciously retired from the field while he could walk.

He was sufficiently sweaty after his exertions to accept Stephen's dubious offer of a refreshing Bud Light Lime. It smelled like a can of Pledge, tasted like cheap lime soda, and was way more fizzy than anything that purported to be a beer should be allowed to be. He grimaced as he swallowed. "That's, uh... that's definitely a Bud Light Lime," he said.

Stephen started to stand up. "Well, if you think you'd prefer the taste of my Nutz-"

"No, it's okay, I'll just stick with this," Jon said hastily. At least beer disguised as soda was vaguely refreshing. "You know I always end up gagging when I try to take a mouthful of Nutz."

"It's because you try to swallow too much at once, Jon," Stephen told him seriously. "You have to go slowly with Nutz. And you do get used to the taste eventually."

"I'll take your word for it," Jon said. Stephen really was prepared to put anything in his mouth in the service of his sponsors.

Despite the Bud Light Lime, it was surprisingly pleasant to just kick back after an evening of unaccustomed physical exertion. It had been a long time since Jon had attempted anything resembling sports - a long time since he'd had a good excuse. With kids it was okay to just get out there and _play_ , without the crippling self-consciousness about his faded skills.

Even Stephen seemed to have enjoyed himself, though he was clearly perturbed at the thought. "It's unnatural," he said. "No red-blooded American should enjoy a game where you use your feet instead of your hands. That's what monkeys do, Jon. It's all just propaganda for Big Evolution!"

"Well, you know, Stephen, maybe all you need to enjoy soccer is the right company," he said. The back of his neck grew warm as he realised that had come off rather unintentionally flirty. "I mean, isn't it always more fun to do things with your kids?" he hurried on.

Stephen's eyebrows lowered darkly. "My children don't make things fun, Jon. They just sit around saying they're bored and quietly resent me. Apart from my daughter. She loudly resents me."

The boys hadn't seemed that unhappy to be spending time with their dad from where Jon was standing. Just the opposite in fact. He sipped his Bud Light Lime as he tried to think of a tactful way to make his point, then remembered that subtlety was largely wasted on Stephen. "Well, uh, have you maybe tried doing things with them that _they_ want to do?" he hinted not so gently.

"But what if they want to do things I don't _like_?" Stephen said, seeming fairly bewildered by the concept. 

"Soccer worked out okay," Jon pointed out. "Who knows, maybe if you try some other things you haven't done before, you'll find that they aren't so bad either."

Stephen stared off into the distance, forehead furrowed as if wrestling with deeply unfamiliar conundrums. Jon dared to hope something was actually beginning to bore its way through that solid wall in his head that most new ideas bounced off without leaving a dent.

Because he knew that somewhere under that shiny outer shell of right-wing outrage machine and consummate entertainer, Stephen was a deeply insecure and lonely man.

And he should know, having more than a bit of practice at hiding that kind of thing himself.


	2. Chapter 2

The fact the Daily Show didn't go out live while the Colbert Report usually did meant that if Jon timed things right, he could be in his office to catch most or all of Stephen's show before he headed home. It was partly justified in his role as executive producer - it never hurt to watch Stephen's latest stunts in real-time, and if necessary, make some frantic calls - but lately he'd been using it as a barometer of Stephen's moods. For a man convinced he was inscrutable, he still managed to spill out every emotion he experienced live on air for all the world to see.

Tonight, though, he seemed to be in fine form, all ebullient energy and theatrical gestures. Jon might despair of Stephen's politics, but he'd still take his confused but sincere brand of passion over any number of blowhards who were less extreme in their views. There was nothing disingenuous about Stephen's opinions, no cynical dance of deception to conceal the gaps in his argument - instead, he proudly presented every step of the mad logic he'd used to fill them, like a small child cobbling together theories from a limited, confused grasp of the facts. There was always the nagging sense that if you could just teach him how reasoning worked, he might turn out to be reasonable.

Admittedly, that part was a work in progress.

The interviews were always Jon's favourite part of the show. Stephen made for a surprisingly illuminating interviewer, if mostly by accident. He had no filter for the ridiculous, but chased ideas off into the wilderness like an overeager puppy. The responses he got to his bizarre lines of questioning could tell you a lot about whether his guests were arguing back from positions of substance and understanding, or hopelessly lost when they couldn't cling to rehearsed talking points.

Having missed the beginning of the show, Jon had no idea who was on tonight until Stephen introduced him. "My guest tonight is a gay rights activist who claims that it's possible to be both gay and Catholic - I'm going to remind him that lying is a sin. Please welcome Matthew Morton!"

Applause for Stephen's usual grandstanding on the way to the interview table, while Jon was left blinking in surprise and wondering who'd made _that_ particular booking. He didn't recognise the name, and the face was no more familiar, an averagely good-looking dark-haired guy in his thirties. A little low-profile compared to Stephen's usual choice of guests; Jon wondered if somebody at the Report was trying to make a point. He probably wasn't the only one to have seen through Stephen's unsubtle efforts at hiding his separation from his wife.

And certain other inclinations he was under the delusion that he kept well concealed. Jon sat forward in fascination to see how this went.

Stephen didn't waste any time. "So, you claim to represent an organisation aimed at gaining more acceptance for lesbian, gay and... BT... Catholics. Isn't that just a pretext to lure people into a hotbed of sin that will see them cast into the fiery pits of hell?"

Morton seemed more amused than offended by the directness, ducking his head with a slight grin. "Uh, wow. Glad you're starting with the easy ones," he said.

Stephen nodded in gracious acceptance of the compliment. "I try. I try."

"Well, firstly, the Catholic church is clear that it welcomes gay people-"

"Yeah, but it's one of those grudging welcomes, like how you've got to kiss your crazy old Aunt Rita because otherwise your mom's gonna be pissed," Stephen butted in. "And nobody likes it when Mom's pissed."

"Maybe so, maybe so," Morton allowed, nodding. "But nonetheless, it's the position of the church that to be gay is not in itself a sin - that people don't make a choice about who they're going to be attracted to, and therefore to experience homosexual inclinations cannot be sinful."

"I make choices about who I'm attracted to," Stephen said. "I make them all the time. I'm making one right now."

"Well, maybe you have an extraordinary amount of willpower." Morton politely let that go unchallenged. "But the church agrees that gay people should be accepted and not discriminated against, that there's nothing sinful about them being who they were born to be."

Stephen was nodding along to this much, at least, but whether it was just his usual reflexive head-bobbing while the idea failed to go in was hard to say.

"Where the church and I and many others _disagree_ is over whether homosexual acts should necessarily be regarded as always sinful when taken in the context of gay and lesbian Catholics trying live a Christian life to the best of their natural ability," Morton continued.

"So you're going up against the organisation that started the Spanish Inquisition. That's a bold choice," Stephen said. "A bold choice."

Morton was still doing his best to stick to his point despite the interjections. "To agree that sexuality is innate, that gay and lesbian people experience their inclinations as a natural aspect of themselves and cannot be other than what they are, and then to state that those same inclinations mean that they can _never_ be permitted the benefits and stability of a loving lifelong partnership that are available to heterosexual people in the state of marriage... well, that requires believing in a level of sadism that I don't think many of us would be comfortable believing of a loving God. So really isn't it more comfortable, isn't it more _plausible_ to believe that the fallible humans who interpret God's word could be mistaken than that it's truly God's will for people to suffer just for who they are?"

Stephen's audience were quieter than usual, and Jon dared to hope that meant at least some of them were thinking rather than just stewing in discontent - but really it was Stephen's reaction he was interested in.

Of course, he wasn't about to concede ground to an appeal to his rationality without a fight. "But what about what it says in the Bible?" he said.

"What _does_ it say in the Bible?" Morton countered, and then went on before Stephen had a chance to try to tell him. "No, the fact is, the Bible is remarkably unconcerned with the issue of the morality of homosexual acts one way or the other. Jesus has nothing to say about it. The prophets, the gospels have nothing to say about it. The concept of homosexuality as an orientation was not even known in biblical times, so the issue of the morality of homosexual behaviour for those who are naturally inclined that way is simply never addressed." He sat back and shrugged. "If you want an opinion on whether it's wrong for gay people to act on their natural inclinations, you're going to have to look elsewhere, because the Bible doesn't say."

"Elsewhere... like my gut," Stephen said almost slyly, seemingly glad to have found some way to tie things back to the comfortable aspects of his worldview.

"I'd say that's an excellent place to look," Morton said, and folded his hands with an enquiring smile. "So what's your gut telling you, Stephen?"

Jon unconsciously leaned forward in his seat as Stephen seemed to waver uncertainly. "My gut is telling me... that I'll have to continue my efforts to nail you after the show," he finished in a rush. "We're almost out of time. Matthew Morton, ladies and gentlemen!"

"I'd be happy to continue this conversation," Morton said over the audience applause. "Who knows, maybe I'll be the one to nail you."

Jon couldn't help but think that Stephen's attempt at a carefree laugh at the idea seemed slightly nervous.

Once the show was over he grabbed his jacket and hurried over to the Report building, determined to strike while the iron was hot. If that interview had succeeded in planting even the smallest seed of uncertainty in Stephen's mind, then it was important to nurture its growth before he just shook the whole thing off and dived straight back into denial. Because between the strain of his fracturing marriage and everything else, Jon really wasn't sure how long Stephen could go on fighting this inner war with himself. Even if he was never prepared to admit his own obvious attraction to men, surely it would ease some of his self-torment if Jon could just help him to believe it wasn't wrong.

He did his best to avoid the exodus of Stephen's audience, but he did get caught by one group of college girls, who fortunately wanted photos rather than to harangue him about his liberal views. It always faintly bewildered him that there was much crossover between their audiences at all, but long-term Daily Show viewers did seem to maintain a lingering fondness for Stephen after his time as a correspondent. Maybe they saw some hint of that same inner man that Jon did.

Or maybe they just thought he was cute and entertaining. He probably shouldn't underestimate the segment of both their audiences that didn't really give a crap about the politics they espoused either way, depressing though it was to contemplate.

Well, even if he wasn't making as much of a difference in the world as he might like, he could at least try to make one for a good friend. He hoped he hadn't missed his chance to talk to Stephen before he left for the night.

When he reached Stephen's office, he could see the lights were on, although that didn't mean much given Stephen thought that conspicuous consumption was something to aim for. However, when he approached he could hear voices through the slightly open door. Apparently Stephen had been serious about continuing to try to nail his guest after the show, because Jon recognised the voice of the man he'd just been watching on TV.

"Listen, I hate to leave this conversation here, but it's getting late," Morton was saying. "How about you give me a call, and maybe we can pick this up another day?"

Jon didn't have to be able to see Stephen to know that he'd be adopting a pose of playing hard to get that wouldn't last a matter of seconds in the face of being wanted. "Well... I _do_ have an opening for a new gay friend," he said coyly.

"And you think I could be the man to fill it?" Morton said, a playful note in his voice. "I would have thought you'd be drowning in offers."

Jon stood frozen outside. They were- were they actually _flirting_ in there? He was fairly sure that Morton was, at any rate, though Stephen's awareness of other people's signals - or indeed his own - was always debatable.

"Oh, well, you know," Stephen said with a deliberately nonchalant air. Jon could swear that he was making his voice deeper. "For some reason the gays don't appreciate my company just because I tell them they're going to burn in hell."

Morton gave a remarkably easy chuckle at that, having apparently already formed his own opinions on how seriously to take Stephen's. "Well, I appreciate your company, Stephen," he said. Through the open door Jon saw them shift toward each other for - probably a handshake. Surely not any other gesture than a handshake. They'd only just met, for God's sake. And Stephen was, well, Stephen.

Which, a little voice reminded him, encompassed not just the denial but also the accompanying fits of needy desperation. Jon turned and hastened away down the hallway before either of them could emerge, not wanting to interrupt... whatever was going on.

The _good_ thing that was going on. Stephen was apparently in the process of either making a friend - a friend with liberal views, at that - or making... something else. One of those options was an excellent thing, and the other was even better. Jon knew he should be delighted.

And, well, it wasn't as if he was _un_ happy - just a little bit stunned, he supposed. And maybe even slightly... let down? Was that what he was feeling? He wasn't sure he could quite pinpoint the source of the nagging discontent. Had he somehow selfishly wanted to be the one to guide Stephen toward taking steps to improve his life? Maybe this was the melancholy of a father whose child unexpectedly took off pedalling on his own with no more need for his support - or, less flatteringly, the sulky resentment of having been struggling for ages to loosen a stuck jar only for someone else to come along and get it on the first try.

Either way, it was stupid and petty. He should be pleased, even proud: Stephen was stretching out of his comfort zone, building new relationships, perhaps even taking the first tremulous steps toward a whole new life.

And maybe the ugly truth of why Jon couldn't feel fully happy for him was that he knew he'd been making no such progress on that goal himself.

#

Jon tried not to resent Stephen dropping him like a hot rock right after meeting Morton, cancelling their next two pizza nights citing plans 'with his other friends'. He knew full well that Stephen had never been the hottest at considering other people's feelings, and besides, this wasn't grade school. It wasn't a deathly betrayal to want to sit with someone else at the lunch table. Plus if he'd been right about Morton's blatant flirting, then this wasn't the sort of 'friendship' that Jon was in any position to compete with.

His therapist regarded him over her glasses once he'd finished explaining all this in somewhat garbled form. "You know, envy is a perfectly natural emotion to feel in this situation," she said.

Jon spluttered, eyes wide at the suggestion. What was she saying, exactly? "I, uh, why- why would I be envious?"

"Of Stephen, taking steps to move on with his life." She cocked her head, bloodhound catching an unexpected scent. "What did you think I meant?"

He wasn't even sure what he'd thought she meant: that he envied Stephen's new maybe-possibly boyfriend? That was ridiculous. Which was exactly why he'd been confused about what she meant. He rubbed his hands nervously on his pants and wondered why, if these sessions were supposed to be doing him good, they were always the time when he most ended up craving a cigarette.

And he'd wasted way too much of this one talking about Stephen when that wasn't really what he was here for. "Okay, could we just... maybe get back to talking about my hypochondria?" he said.

"We can talk about whatever you want to talk about," she said.

And why did he always hate _that_ more than if she'd actually pushed?

#

Jon missed his weekly meet-ups with Stephen more than he could have guessed. Catching up with his other friends somehow only left him feeling more isolated than ever as they told tales of their happy families and busy social lives while he had to face up to another night alone in his empty apartment.

Yet the idea of going out to try to pick up women felt even more hollow than his regular date with own hand. He didn't just want to get laid, he wanted that sense of _belonging_ that he'd had when he was married, that it felt like he'd almost touched again on that comfortably domestic evening of soccer with Stephen and his boys. But that had been a purely borrowed family scene, and he guessed it had been just a childish fantasy to imagine Stephen's life would somehow stay on hold so he could keep hanging around the periphery of it.

He felt vaguely pathetic to be watching Stephen's show with an eagle-eyed attention to his moods, like a pining teenager scanning for some hint that his attentions might be welcome. Made all the more humiliating by Stephen being bright-eyed and upbeat and showing no such yearning for Jon's company.

Of course, Jewish guilt managed to make him feel like he'd somehow willed it to happen when Stephen finally _did_ take an emotional nose-drive.

It started with a missed toss - not entirely unheard of - but then Stephen opened the show looking visibly rumpled and taking fortifying whiskey shots. A rant about the media not sticking by President Bush made an abrupt swerve into raving about people who cruelly went back on their implied promises "-just because they get some once in a lifetime chance to push their militant gay agenda at the Vatican! Well, the Pope won't stand for you to trying force that monstrous thing in there, and don't think I'll let you try to shove it down my throat either! Only the testosterone-fuelled essence of virile American masculinity passes _these_ cherry lips." He pointed at his mouth, chin proudly raised.

"And don't think for a minute that I wanted to go walking on a moonlit beach, or run laughing through the lawn sprinklers holding hands!" he said, composure wavering as he swung just as quickly from aggression to despair. "I didn't start daydreaming that I'd Say Yes to the Dress. The very thought makes me cry tears... of... disgust..." Stephen broke into open sobs, rubbing his eyes. "Oh, God, the disgust, it burns, it burns!"

He gave up downing shots and started gulping from the bottle just before Jimmy mercifully sent him into commercial.

The Colbert Report staff looked distinctly relieved to see Jon arrive when he hurried across to the other studio at the close of the show.

"He's in his office," Bobby said. "Tad did a sweep for weapons while we were on the air, but he didn't have a chance to get all of the alcohol."

"Thanks, Bobby." He guessed he should probably find it more alarming than he did that the Report crew had procedures for this kind of thing. But such was life with Stephen and his volatile moods.

Jon knocked cautiously on the door of Stephen's office. "Stephen? It's Jon."

Only the sound of muffled weeping emerged through the door.

He knew better than to imply he could tell Stephen was upset. "Listen, um... I know you're a busy man, but I was wondering if you might be able to find the time to go for pizza again this weekend." Still no response from within, but at least it seemed that the sobbing had stopped, and he had the sense of being listened to.

Time to lay it on thick - or, from another perspective, actually be honest.

"I, uh... I really missed you," he said.

The door flew open like a shot, Stephen already perfectly composed with judgemental eyebrows in place. "Really, Jon, this kind of display of emotional neediness is embarrassing for both of us," he said sternly, adjusting his glasses. "But mostly you."

Jon hung his head and tried to look chastened. "I'm sorry, Stephen."

"Hmph." He made a show of great reluctance. "Well, I _suppose_ I could free some time in my calendar for benefit of the less fortunate."

"I appreciate it," Jon said.

The worst part was that he actually did.

#

Despite the brief lift the invitation seemed to have brought to Stephen's mood, pizza night didn't go quite as well as Jon might have hoped. The kind of 'not well' where Stephen showed up already drunk, got progressively drunker, and made a clumsy attempt to hit on their waitress despite not noticing when she was replaced by another woman halfway through. Jon apologised profusely, left a very big tip, and hoped that none of the staff there ever watched news shows on basic cable.

He did his best to gently steer Stephen away from his efforts to make a beeline for the nearest bar. "Uh, I think maybe you've had enough there, buddy," he said. "Don't you have church in the morning?" Not that he knew anything about Stephen's religious observances beyond a vague impression they existed.

"You're not my wife," Stephen said, staring at him with bleary belligerence. "You know who else says she's not my wife? My wife! Well, the joke's on her. You can't unmarry a Catholic! Even if she divorces me, she's still married to me." He took a sharp turn from aggression into wide-eyed distress. "I can't get a _divorce_ , Jon," he said plaintively. "How do I make her come back?"

Oh, Stephen. Jon gave his arm a sympathetic squeeze. He guessed this was about more than just Morton's abandonment after all.

"You can't, Stephen," he said, gently but firmly. Stephen didn't have the greatest grasp on the difference between persistence and stalking, a side effect of not having the greatest grasp on the idea that other people's feelings existed and were allowed to be different from his. "If she wants to leave, then you can't make her stay."

Stephen huddled in on himself, wrapping his arms around his middle. "Why does everybody _leave_?" he said miserably. "Even Gipper's gone now. It's just me and Sweetness, alone against the world. At least _she'll_ never leave me. She promised."

Okay, it was already unsettling enough that Stephen had a pet name for his favourite gun and occasionally seemed to think that it talked back to him without him bringing it up in this context. Jon took a deep breath. "Stephen, Gipper didn't leave you, okay?" he reminded him. "He was with you right up to the end. Just like your childhood dog didn't leave you, whatever your parents said." He set his hands on Stephen's shoulders to look him in the eye. "And I haven't left you. I'm still right here."

"Jon..." Stephen met his gaze, eyes huge and serious behind his glasses. Jon caught his breath as Stephen swayed forward, as if to impart some whispered confidence...

And then promptly leaned past him to vomit in the gutter. Jon sighed.

"Okay, then." He rubbed Stephen's back. "Let's go get you poured into a cab."

#

By Monday's show, Stephen appeared mostly back to his usual self, but Jon was still worried. Stephen was so long-practised at living in denial that Jon didn't think he'd ever acquired any coping skills for accepting changes in his life that he couldn't just ignore until they changed back. Though he kept it largely together on the show after that - well, to the low standards required of a deeply passionate pundit, anyway - he was still prone to even wilder mood swings than usual, and some less characteristic fits of glassy-eyed introspection.

Something had to blow eventually, and Jon wasn't sure if it was with relief or dread that he greeted the call that came in the early hours of one Wednesday morning. "Stephen, what's wrong?" he said, not bothering to point out the time. At least this wasn't one of the rare nights when he'd already gotten to sleep before three.

"The mirror's broken, Jon," Stephen said, sounding more bewildered than anything. All the same, Jon's heart lurched. Shit, had Stephen put his fist through a mirror? Or - God, had he shot it? Jon wouldn't put it past him.

"Stephen, did you cut yourself?" he asked urgently, getting out of bed and hurriedly casting about for a pair of pants. "Do you want me to come over there? Do you need the hospital?"

"I didn't say _I_ was broken, Jon," he said irritably. "I said the mirror. Keep up."

"Right," he said, still not abandoning the quest for pants. The trace of Stephen's usual impatience for other people's perfectly reasonable questions was reassuring, but only a little. He wasn't sure he particularly trusted Stephen to report his actual state rather than the one he wanted to be in.

"I'm not broken!" Stephen insisted almost frantically.

"Okay," Jon said, eyes widening at the urgency. It seemed to be important to Stephen that he agree that. "Still, how about I just come over there so I can take a look at... your mirror?"

"Can you fix it?" he asked, with almost childish hope.

"I... don't know about that, Stephen," he had to admit. "Pretty hard to un-break a mirror."

"Oh," Stephen said in a small voice.

"But I'll come over and we'll see, all right?" he promised. "Just... stay where you are until I get there, and don't touch the mirror, okay?"

His heart was racing throughout the long cab journey to Stephen's place. Nightmare visions of finding Stephen passed out bleeding on the floor - should he have called the ambulance anyway, regardless of what Stephen had said to him on the phone? And most importantly, was he capable of kicking down a door without having a near-fatal asthma attack?

It turned out that his panic might have been premature. Not only did Stephen answer the door looking entirely unharmed, but...

"Stephen, I thought you said the mirror was broken?" Jon's reflection frowned back at him as he eyed the very much intact mirror in Stephen's palatial master bathroom.

"It is, Jon." Stephen studied their mirror images with a look of suspicion that was only intensified by the fact he'd already taken his glasses off for bed and had to squint. "It's stopped working."

"Uh... it's doing pretty much what I expect a mirror to do, I have to say," Jon said, bemused. Unless it was supposed to be some kind of electronic talking mirror or something - and to be fair, if such a tacky travesty existed, Stephen Colbert was absolutely the man to buy it. But it looked like just an ordinary mirror to him...?

"But it doesn't make me angry any more!" Stephen said.

Jon turned to look at him. "Uh... should it?" 'Depressed', he could see, though in his opinion Stephen was massively exaggerating the ravages of age he claimed to have suffered in the years they'd known each other. But angry?

"It's important to maintain a healthy protective coating of anger," Stephen told him. "Or else you might get dragged down into the abyss of tolerance, and then where would we be? Anarchy, Jon! Anarchy. That's why I perform my anger exercises. Any time I feel like I might be getting too accepting of the gays, I come in here late at night, I look at that guy in the mirror and I say to him, 'You're gay.' And when he nods and looks ashamed of himself, I get mad!"

Something in Jon's heart quietly broke for him. "And that's not working any more?" he asked tentatively.

"No," he said in a plaintive tone. "He barely even looks ashamed of himself at all, and now I just get sad."

Jon knew that they were on the verge of something life-changing right now, but he had no idea how he could coax it out without chasing Stephen back into denial.

Tread carefully; avoid directly challenging Stephen's warped perspective. "Maybe... he's-" _you're_ "-only ashamed when there's someone else in the house?" he suggested. It had to have been easier for Stephen to keep himself in line with that layer of shame and self-loathing when his wife and family life were still in the picture. "Why don't you try it again now I'm here?"

"You think that might help?" Stephen asked, looking at him with that same near-childlike trust that made Jon feel almost guilty for leading him astray, even though he was sure this was for the best. He gave a wordless shrug.

Stephen turned and regarded himself in the bathroom mirror. Fluffy-haired, without his glasses, in silk stars and stripes pyjamas, he looked young and anxious before he found his stern frown. "You're gay," he told his reflection, in almost a whisper.

"Any shame?" Jon asked him gently.

Stephen nodded silently and looked down at the floor.

Jon stepped up beside him in front of the mirror and wrapped his arms around him in a close embrace. "How about now?" he asked.

Stephen still wouldn't look at him. "Less?" he conceded in a small voice, after a moment.

"Okay. Then how about we just stay like this for a while?" Jon gradually guided him down so they could both sit on the bathroom floor, still wrapped around each other. He rubbed a soothing hand down Stephen's back the way he might to calm a crying child, though Stephen didn't make a single sound.

After a long time spent in that silence, Stephen hugged onto the arm that Jon had across his middle. "Jon?" he said, and turned his face in toward Jon's shoulder. He took a quiet breath. "...I'm gay."

"I know, Stephen," he said, and gave him a gentle squeeze. "It's okay."

#

Jon wasn't sure how long they spent huddled on that bathroom floor; long enough for the chill of the tiles to seep through the threadbare old pair of sweatpants that he usually only wore around the apartment. He'd have some crippling aches in the morning, but he'd stay down here all night and tomorrow if need be. He wasn't going to be the one to let go a second earlier than Stephen wanted.

Eventually Stephen sat up and turned to focus on him. Without his glasses, he looked naked-faced and strange; he had startlingly dark eyelashes, and somehow his usual frames softened the lines of his face and distracted from just how classically good-looking he actually was. In another life, he could have been a movie star.

Maybe a happier life. He'd denied himself so long...

Jon was suddenly freshly aware of the intimacy of their position, pressed together like this with both of them dressed for bed. Stephen's gaze was intense as he focused without his glasses, and Jon saw those dark lashes dip as Stephen's eyes dropped to his mouth. He realised, in a detached sort of way, that Stephen was about to kiss him.

He couldn't pull away. It felt too cruel, too harmful a rejection after Stephen had been so desperately brave. He let his eyes drift closed to match Stephen's...

And jumped at the clatter as Stephen accidentally elbowed the bathroom cabinet. Stephen leapt back to his feet like he'd been stung and backed away.

"Jon," he said, then coughed and tried again at a deeper, smoother pitch. "Jon, you should probably go. The situation is," another cough, "under control." As he turned toward the door, Jon wanted to yank him back and press that kiss on him he'd clearly so wanted to take.

-Fuck. What? No. He faltered in bewilderment as he caught up to his own thoughts. He didn't want to kiss Stephen; it had been purely Stephen's urge. Avoiding crushing his courage with rejection was one thing, but Jon making an actual move would be leading him on. And- why was he even thinking about this? He should be grateful Stephen had backed out and saved them both a hideously awkward conversation.

Jon climbed back to his feet, moving a little stiffly from his time on the cold floor. Stephen was right, he should be getting home. It was past the time even he usually managed some sleep, and they both had shows to do tomorrow. He hoped Stephen would be in a fit state to handle his. "Are you going to be okay?" he asked softly.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Stephen said. "It's not like... anything's changed..." His lip wobbled dangerously.

"Sure it has." Jon pulled him into another brief hug. "You were very brave tonight, Stephen," he said. "I'm proud of you." He had a feeling that was something neither of them had been told quite as much as they might have liked to hear. Positive reinforcement, that had to be the key. Just... without any kissing.

Stephen sighed a little and relaxed into his touch, but this time around Jon was suddenly less comfortable. He was aware of Stephen's body in a way he hadn't been before, the press of warm silk-clad muscle, the soft brush of his hair; aware that Stephen wasn't just a lost child in need of comforting, but an adult man who had adult needs too. He coughed and stepped away.

"Okay, um, we should get some sleep," he said. "But call me if you need to talk about... anything. I'm here." And despite his words to Stephen, he'd suffered too many insomniac nights to believe he was likely to get any sort of rest out of what remained of this one.

Not with the way his thoughts were whirling on the journey home and long after. On bad nights his thoughts got caught up in endless pointless loops: tonight, he'd unsurprisingly earned himself a trip to one of his less common but not unheard-of themes, 'What if I'm a little bit bisexual?'

He'd had the odd half-hearted sexuality crisis since he was a teenager, though he was fairly sure it was just another manifestation of his usual neuroticism and hypochondria: just like one small cough could make his brain convinced he had pneumonia, a single idle thought about another guy's good looks could throw him into a fit of confused self-questioning. In truth, the so-called evidence seemed pretty thin to him.

So he noticed when guys were good-looking: well, he worked in TV! He saw a lot of professionally pretty people. And any guy cursed with the ridiculously teenage hormones to jerk off as much as he did got adventurous with porn and creative with fantasies. There was plenty of stuff in there that he'd never touch in real life, so what made the occasional dip into guy-on-guy action any different from the other things he surfaced from confused by how they'd been so hot in the moment?

He was forty-five years old; surely if he was truly, genuinely interested, he'd have done something about it by this age. Imagining otherwise just made him feel like an impostor, pretending he was cool and interesting, that he somehow owned a little piece of other people's struggles that he'd never had anything to do with. The idea that he could be secretly bi inside his head without ever having even _considered_ dating a guy was really no different from Stephen's stupid conviction that he was one thirteenth part Chickasaw.

Hell, look at him right now, making the enormous step Stephen had taken tonight all about himself.

No, he'd been caught up in the emotion of the moment, that was all. Stephen had wanted to kiss him, and Jon had wanted so badly to let him have that fairytale, to give him the reward he deserved for his bravery, that he'd fooled himself into thinking that he wanted it too.

It couldn't have been any more than that.

#

Despite his lack of sleep, Jon made an effort to get in to work early so he could go check on Stephen. He couldn't help but notice that the Report studio was looking a little more colourful than its usual profusion of red, white and blue; 'explosion in a rainbow glitter factory with added scantily clad dudes' might be the best summation of the theme. He caught the eye of Bobby, supervising the hanging of a large rainbow banner at the back, who only gave him an eloquent shrug in return. He went in search of Stephen.

Jon found him in his office, wearing a neon pink shirt and a false moustache and rather disconsolately wrapping a small rainbow scarf around the neck of one of his eagle statuettes.

"Uh, Stephen... what are you doing?" Jon had to ask. He should have remembered Stephen wasn't ever capable of doing anything by halves.

"I'm making my workplace fabulous," Stephen said, sounding distinctly grim about it.

"Okay. Um... why?"

"Because I have to, Jon!" he said, whirling around. "The gays have finally gotten a hold on me, just like they always wanted. I've surrendered to their agenda, and now I have to wear the rainbow letter of my shame!"

"Uh... I don't think you actually have to, Stephen," he said. "I mean, not if you don't want to. I'm pretty sure none of this stuff is compulsory." He spread his hands to encompass the office's new décor.

"It's not?" Stephen said. His forehead furrowed in consternation. "But then how will people know?"

"Well, you could," Jon shrugged, "tell them? But only if you wanted to," he added hastily. "You don't actually have to do that either."

"Okay, but what about the moustache?" Stephen said, bringing his hand to his lips.

"I have met gay people without moustaches," Jon assured him seriously.

"Lesbians, Jon," he corrected. "We call those lesbians."

Jon couldn't help but chuckle. "Men too, Stephen. Really."

Stephen frowned. "Jon, there seem to be a worrying lack of regulations surrounding this whole homosexual lifestyle," he said sternly. "These undercover gays could be anywhere! Innocent strangers could even be fooled into thinking they were normal people."

"Imagine that," Jon said dryly. He sighed. "Stephen, really, you don't have to wear the moustache."

"Good, because I don't mind telling you, it was impossible to groom that thing without getting the comb up my nose." Stephen shook his head. "I don't know how Wilford Brimley does it." He ripped the moustache off dramatically and threw it down into the trashcan, then winced and clutched his face.

"What about the rest of this stuff?" Jon asked, looking around at the state of the office.

"It can all go," Stephen said decisively, tearing down rainbow flags and hurling a calendar of sexy firemen into the trash. "None of this is me, Jon. This is not who I am! These clothes are not-" He paused in the act of removing his cufflinks and pointed them out to Jon. "Look at these rainbow unicorn cufflinks, aren't they _adorable_?" he said.

They were certainly... glittery. Stephen appeared to be visibly reluctant as he moved to take them off.

"Stephen, if you like the cufflinks, why don't you just keep those?" Jon said.

Stephen looked bewildered. "But you just said-"

"I said you don't _have_ to have all this stuff," he said. "That doesn't mean that you can't keep parts if you want to."

"I can still be me, just with extra unicorns?" he said.

Jon smiled. "Exactly." Stephen looked thunderstruck by the entire concept.

Then snapped out of it as he seemed to become freshly aware of his state. "I'm still getting rid of this shirt, though," he said abruptly, and started to unbutton it.

"Yeah, that's probably an idea," Jon agreed. He wasn't sure Stephen's audience were ready for quite that shade of pink. He turned to go before Stephen could finish stripping out of his shirt.

And politely pretended not to notice that he fished the sexy firemen calendar out of the trash as soon as Jon's back was turned.

#

Jon had a depressing amount of practice at doing the show on close to zero sleep, and it went well enough, if not quite his most sparkling form. He was relieved to tune in for the Colbert Report and confirm the rainbow banners, moustache and pink shirt were all gone, and even more pleased to spot the telltale glitter of the sparkly unicorn cufflinks when Stephen shook hands with his guest. Maybe there was some hope for him yet.

He headed back over to the other studio to congratulate Stephen after the show. Stephen was clearly in an exuberant mood, still out there basking in the audience's adulation when Jon first arrived. When he finally managed to tear himself away, he all but bounced over to greet him.

"Did you see me out there?" he said. "I was fantastic!"

"You were pretty great, Stephen," Jon agreed affably. After last night's emotional events, he'd have taken anything short of a complete on-air meltdown as a decent result, and all things considered it had actually been a pretty good show.

His eyes were wide and bright with excitement as he leaned in to speak confidentially. "And Jon, I did that _whole_ show while gay, and nobody even noticed!" he said. He tilted his head in reflection. "It was almost as if I had the gayness safely shut away inside some sort of comfortingly small, dark space where nobody could see it."

"Like a closet?" Jon suggested wryly.

"More of a wardrobe, Jon," he corrected, holding up a hand. "Maybe a toilet cubicle. But you've grasped the general idea." The delight swiftly resurfaced. "But the important thing is that nobody knows! That means I can be one of those hypocritical gays who still fight against the terrible menace gay rights pose to our society while gaying it up on their own time."

"I... guess you _could_ do that," Jon was forced to concede. If you completely ignored the very important issue of 'could' versus 'should'.

Baby steps, he reminded himself as Stephen beamed back at him. Baby steps.


	3. Chapter 3

Jon didn't tell his therapist about the way that Stephen had come out to him: it just seemed too personal, too much of a betrayal of Stephen's precious trust even with the theoretical protection of confidentiality. Besides, he was sure she'd end up pressing him about that almost-kiss, and he didn't need her trying to make that into something it wasn't. He already had enough issues without inventing more.

Instead, he tried to explain the reasons for his renewed optimism in more general terms. "I think, you know, in the long run, this divorce is going to turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to him," he said. "It's a fresh start, a chance to break away from the guilt and face up to all the things he's been in denial about."

Helen nodded, digesting that. "And what about you, Jon?" she asked.

"What?" he said nervously. What exactly was she asking him: whether _his_ divorce had been a good thing? Did she think _he_ was in denial about something?

She pressed her lips together and set her notepad down. "Jon... do you realise you've spent nearly all of our recent sessions talking almost exclusively about Stephen?"

He hunched his shoulders defensively. "Well, that's, I- we've been spending a lot of time together lately," he said. It was the one part of his life where he felt like he was achieving actual _progress_ , not just stuck in the same old rut - of course he would talk about that. "He's going through some stuff and..." he shrugged, "I want to help him with that."

"Don't mistake me, Jon, I think that's a very good thing," she said. "I'm glad to see you making an effort to reach out and trust the strength of your friendship. But friendship alone is not going to be enough to fulfil your needs."

He was nearly sure any images that conjured about him and Stephen were the work of his professionally dirty mind and not anything she was implying. Nearly.

"Needs?" he said somewhat squeakily.

She fixed him with a knowing look. "When was the last time you actually went on a date?" she asked.

"Um..." For a moment he honestly couldn't remember the answer. Then he could, and decided maybe it was better to keep pretending he couldn't. "A while back, I guess?"

"A while back." She gave that massive understatement the pronunciation it deserved. Jon was fairly sure professional therapists were trained not to sigh, but she managed to give the impression that she wanted to anyway. "It's good that you're helping Stephen come to terms with his divorce - but don't you think it's past time that you took some steps to get on with life after yours?"

#

So, here Jon was, on a date. Partly in the name of following his therapist's advice, but mostly, if he was honest, because almost kissing Stephen seemed like a pretty clear sign it had been way, way too long since he'd last gotten laid.

He'd done his best to ignore the theatrical fainting of shock around the office when he'd finally agreed to be set up with somebody's friend Rachel who was, he was assured, 'perfect for him'. This turned out to mean Jewish and cute and a teacher and willing to laugh at his jokes and, oh God, was it possible to go without dating so long you lost all ability to remember what being interested felt like? Because he was fairly sure he ought to be, yet... nothing. He was having a very nice dinner with a very nice woman who was almost certainly _too_ nice to sleep with him tonight, and the motivation to impress her enough that it eventually might happen just wasn't there.

Maybe he'd gone so long without a relationship that he'd just lost the ability to picture himself in one. He'd adapted to being alone, and now that was his natural state. How did you say, 'It's not you, it's my pitiful inadequacy as a human being'?

He probably should have learned that one by now.

It was as much a relief as an embarrassment when his phone rang during the debate over dessert. "Uh, sorry, I should probably get that," he said as he spied Stephen's name on the screen. "A friend of mine's been going through a rough time, and..."

...And she was understanding, too. What was wrong with him? He should be thanking his lucky stars that this smart, funny, awesome woman had consented to go out with him, not trying to figure out the least awkward way to ditch her.

Nonetheless, he hurried outside the restaurant to take a call that was probably just one of Stephen's regular tirades about the increasing price of tube socks or... well, actually, Jon supposed Stephen no longer had much reason to fear the prospect of baby carrots turning him gay, but still, it would probably be something equally ridiculous.

Or not.

"Was this part of your plan, Jon?" Stephen demanded dramatically as soon as he picked up the phone. "To cripple me with your liberal soccer-loving agenda? I may never walk again!"

"Uh... really?" he said somewhat doubtfully. If that was anywhere near true he'd have expected Stephen to sound more upset than just his regular degree of mad.

"Well, Doctor Vizzone said it was just a sprained ankle, but what does he know?" Stephen said.

"Um, medicine, probably." Jon adjusted his grip on the phone and absently turned to offer his date an apologetic smile through the restaurant window. He had a feeling this was going to be a long conversation. "You sprained your ankle?"

"Jon, you said it would be all right for a manly American hero like me to experiment with soccer!" Stephen said accusingly. "I trusted you!"

Okay, so he was picking up a subtle hint that maybe this wasn't entirely about soccer. He chose his next words with care. "Uh, well, Stephen, sometimes when you experiment with things that are new to you it can be difficult," he said. "I know when things are new and exciting it can be tempting to try to go too far too fast, and then you can have... setbacks. But that doesn't mean that... soccer... isn't right for you."

"Hrmph."

Was that a dubious noise, or a 'willing to be convinced' sort of noise? Jon needed to see him.

He made a decision. "Listen, how about I come over there?" he said. "I can be... maybe half an hour?"

He winced guiltily as his date gave him a small wave through the restaurant window.

#

Having extricated himself from the failed date with as much dignity as possible, Jon took a cab over to Stephen's house. It was Alex who opened the door, his little brother in tow; it should have occurred to him that if Stephen was playing soccer the boys would be here.

"Hey, guys. How's your dad?" Jon asked.

"Whiny," said Alex, with an early dress rehearsal of teenage disdain. "Mark Harper at school sprained _his_ ankle, and _he_ didn't even cry."

"Yeah, well, you're a lot more resilient when you're a kid," Jon said, feeling obliged to stick up for Stephen's good name. "Go easy on your dad, he doesn't do a lot of sports." It was sweet that he'd been trying to play with the kids at all, and Jon didn't want to discourage the effort. He'd have to find some form of positive reinforcement. "Where is he, on the couch?"

The boys trailed him like puppies as he entered the house, and he had to wonder if, as mini-Colberts, they were any better at fending for themselves in a crisis. "Hey, have you guys eaten?" it occurred to him to ask. It was getting late, and if Stephen had been preoccupied getting his ankle checked out he probably hadn't thought.

Sure enough, they both shook their heads. He briefly considered pizza yet again, but it probably wasn't good to let their mom get the impression they were living on takeout while at Stephen's house. Even if they were.

"I'll fix you something in a minute, okay?" he promised. Hopefully Stephen's bachelor kitchen would feature some ingredients that suited his limited cooking skills of heating up things that came out of boxes with instructions.

Stephen was huddled on the couch looking thoroughly miserable, and also more than slightly ridiculous with his long hairy legs sticking out of a pair of alarmingly short shorts. Jon wiped away a fond smile that he probably wouldn't appreciate.

"Hey. How's the ankle?" he asked from the doorway.

"It's a fiery agony unmatched by the deepest pits of hell, Jon," Stephen said. "And yet they wouldn't give me Vicodin, even when I broke down and begged."

Jon couldn't imagine the breaking down and begging had much helped his case. "Okay, well, how about I get you some fresh ice to put on that?" he suggested instead. "And if there's anything else you need..."

Stephen, as it turned out, had a lengthy list.

"-and my copy of this week's People magazine, and a blanket - but not one of the ones in the downstairs linen closet, one of the _good_ blankets, Jon - and some hot chocolate. With whiskey in it. And marshmallows! I want marshmallows! The pink ones, not the white ones."

"Okay, Stephen," he said, smiling. "I'll see what I can do."

He fetched all of Stephen's many requests, including those on the secondary list he was given when he got back, and then fixed the kids some basic pasta with what little food Stephen had in the house. This was parenting, he supposed: making a meal for somebody else when you'd already just eaten and the thought of more food made you vaguely nauseous.

Fortunately, the boys didn't seem to have sophisticated enough palates to recognise the issues with his culinary skills. While they were eating, he went back to check on Stephen. To Jon's amusement, he seemed to have crashed from the combination of soccer, painkillers and hot chocolate, sprawled out on the couch with one arm dangling loose from the cocoon of the blanket. He still had his glasses on, though his face was tipping perilously close to mashing up against the armrest of the couch.

When Jon's soft approach failed to wake Stephen from his slumber, he cautiously stooped down beside the couch to lift the glasses from his face. As he drew them free, Stephen's dark eyelashes fluttered, and he opened soft, sleepy eyes to focus hazily on Jon. A lock of hair had fallen across his forehead, and the impulse to stroke it away and draw his hand down along the line of Stephen's jaw was so strong Jon was almost reaching out before he caught himself.

Oh, _shit_. That sudden tightening of his stomach and maybe somewhere lower down, that lightning bolt to the spine; it was everything that he'd been waiting for in vain on his abortive date with Rachel. That sense of aching _want_ \- to touch, and more than that to just be close, to draw Stephen into his arms on the couch and melt against him. He couldn't blame Stephen this time for the desire to trace a thumb across those slightly parted lips and kiss the look of confusion away.

Fuck, he thought distantly. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

He had to get out of here before he did something stupid.

Jon hastily straightened up, shoving the glasses back at a still visibly sleep-fogged Stephen. "Uh, your glasses... were coming off," he said lamely as he took a nervous step back. "Listen, um, I was just going to wake you up to tell you that I, uh, I have to go now." The words tumbled out of him in a hurried rush, as if he could block Stephen from making any response just by continuing to talk. "I made pasta for the kids - there's extra in the kitchen if you want to maybe heat some up later or something."

Stephen frowned as if struggling to concentrate on his words; Jon suspected that he might have taken a few not strictly prescribed painkillers, and right now he was guiltily glad of it. "You're leaving?" Stephen said, looking like a child who'd just been told that he couldn't keep the puppy.

Jon's heart twinged, but really, it was better to go now than risk saying or doing something that would make things hideously awkward between them. "I'm sorry, Stephen, but I really can't stay any longer," he said. "I'll see you at work on Monday, okay?" He should probably add, 'Call me if you need anything,' but he didn't want to invite more contact with Stephen than strictly necessary until he'd had the chance to get his head together.

"Okay," Stephen echoed, still looking a bit lost, and oh, he felt like such an asshole. But really, it was better this way.

Even if the fact the kids also looked disappointed when he told them he was going surely had to count for triple asshole points.

#

Jon spent the journey back to his apartment in a state of barely contained agitation. Before they arrived, he had the cab driver stop so he could pick up his first pack of cigarettes in years. He tried not to notice he was shaking as he lit one and paced the apartment.

Okay. So, bisexual. Okay. That wasn't, shouldn't really be such a shock to the system - he guessed he'd always kind of known, somewhere deep down that he chose not to look at much. But it was still a cold slap to the face to have to concede that for all he'd pitied, maybe even felt slightly superior to Stephen for the way that his conservative outlook fucked him up, he maybe wasn't all that crazy about having these feelings in a homophobic world himself. He didn't _think_ he had any ugly attitudes of his own to root out, but God, did his miserable failure of a personal life really need to get any more complicated?

Still: men - even a concrete attraction to a specific man that he actually knew in real life and could actually make a potential move on... that much he was sure he could get to grips with, once he got past the first flush of _oh shit this is really happening and now I gotta deal_. But... Stephen? It was a terrifying thought, for so many reasons. Stephen was just so emotionally fragile, and Jon was so screwed up, and he didn't think he was flattering himself to believe that they'd both grown to depend on this new, closer friendship between them. One wrong move could shatter both of them.

And there were oh so many potential disasters to choose from. What if he tried to confess his feelings for Stephen, only to find he couldn't deal with the physical reality of man-on-man action? Stephen would be crushed. Or what if _Stephen_ couldn't deal, if he completely freaked out at the prospect of crossing the line between confession and taking action?

And most pressingly of all, what if Stephen just didn't _want_ him? He'd thought there had been something that night in the bathroom, but that had been a vulnerable moment, the first time Stephen had ever dared to share his secret. Once his confidence grew, once he gained the courage to approach the men who caught his eye, he'd be able to have anyone he wanted. Why would he settle for Jon?

No, Jon had to put these thoughts away, like any other stupid crush on someone unattainable. He just needed to get a grip on this racing anxiety and bury himself in preparing material for next week's shows until he stopped thinking about it. That, and _definitely_ avoid doing any jerking off while that image of Stephen gazing up at him was still fresh on his mind.

Oh, and throw away the rest of that pack of cigarettes without smoking any more of them. That would be a smart move too.

Jon kept exactly none of those vows.

#

At work next week it was relatively easy to get away with limiting his amount of contact with Stephen, especially since he was currently making a production of resting his sprained ankle. Jon was sure he was a little stiff and awkward in the tosses, but that was easily covered by his quite real befuddlement at the story Stephen had told to explain the injury, which involved rescuing an eagle from a group of vicious bears. Stephen's logic, so far as he could ascertain, was that since the soccer story didn't _sound_ like something he would do, it followed that this version was truthier.

Jon kind of wished he could buy into Stephen's philosophy that editing reality into a neater, more palatable narrative was not just acceptable but the right thing to do. Because, frankly, he felt like an asshole yet again coming up with excuses for weaselling out of their regular Saturday night pizza date.

But he really wasn't in the headspace right now to deal with anything that might actually _feel_ like a date.

"I'm sorry, Stephen," he said. "I don't think I'm going to be able to make it to dinner this week. I've just got too much stuff going on this weekend." Like his scheduled hours of freaking out, followed by a little time set aside for beating himself up for freaking out, then attempts to assure himself he wasn't homophobic that spiralled into sexy fantasies, then some guilty masturbation, and then shame. At least judging by the pattern set by the rest of the week.

Stephen lifted his chin with an air of forced nonchalance. "Well, that's... fine," he said with a shrug. "I don't know why you think I would have been free anyway. I have a busy weekend planned receiving get-well visits from my _other friends_." He fixed Jon with a scalding glare.

"Sorry, Stephen," he repeated, shoulders sinking miserably.

He _really_ needed to get a grip on this crush before his avoidance of Stephen ended up wrecking the very friendship he was trying to preserve.

#

There was probably some kind of psychological term for being the sort of person who cancelled his standing appointment with his therapist because he didn't want to have to talk to her while he was dealing with difficult emotional stuff. Other than 'dumb'. Nonetheless, he was resolutely sticking with team head in sand on this one.

For all that it wasn't working so great.

Avoiding Stephen only made it easier to gloss over his many flaws, and sharpened Jon's awareness of just how much he'd come to rely on their time together to fill the void. He was achingly lonely and had been for years on end, in a way he hadn't come to fully appreciate until his deepening friendship with Stephen had pushed that back for a while. Could he risk that friendship for more? Should he?

The fact was, though he'd coaxed Stephen into being brave with his feelings, Jon knew he was a huge coward himself when it came to the emotional stuff. Why face the humiliation of rejection and failure when you could just stay happy and secure in the knowledge that if you hadn't tried, no one could prove how much you sucked?

Well, mostly happy.

Happy _enough_.

In recent weeks Jon had made more of a habit of stopping in to see Stephen at the Report studio before their shows, but he took a pass on that when they returned to work on Monday. Still feeling guilty for having blown him off at the weekend - and for where phrases like that tended to take his mind these days - he decided to ease in with the safer, more public long-distance contact of the toss.

That might have been a mistake. When they established the link, the Report studio was dark, and Stephen's chair was turned away.

"Uh... Stephen, are you there?" he asked tentatively.

Stephen spun the chair to face him like a Bond villain. "Yes, I am, Jon - because unlike some people, I _honour_ my commitments."

Oh, boy. Jon wasn't exactly eager to hash this out in front of an audience - two, in fact, one of them with distinctly conservative values - but he doubted it would be a good idea to let it fester.

"Listen, Stephen, I really am sorry about Saturday," he said, all too conscious of the many pairs of ears now listening in. "I'll make it up to you somehow, I promise." He could point out that Stephen had ditched _him_ multiple times to go play with his new friend Morton, but Stephen had probably already blocked all memory of that association after its abrupt end, plus- oh, wow, he really _had_ been jealous back then, hadn't he?

Either way, he didn't want their friendship to end up another victim of Stephen's ability to selectively edit out parts of his life that didn't go the way he'd hoped.

But Stephen was unmoved. "This is America, Jon," he said coldly. "We don't leave a man behind! Except when it's necessary for strategic reasons," he added in an undertone, then went on without missing a beat. "Don't think I'll forget the way you callously ditched me as soon as I was too injured to keep up!" He lifted his leg onto the desk to show the ankle brace that Jon was fairly sure he didn't actually need. "Am I no more than a lame horse, Jon? Are you going to have me taken out and _shot_?" His pitch rose almost to the point of cracking on the final word.

Jon raised his hands, alarmed. "No, Stephen, really, it wasn't like that," he insisted. "I was just, I was just busy."

"A _likely_ story," Stephen said, dripping disdain. He folded his arms in fearsome silence.

Aaand they still had an audience. "Anyway, Stephen," he said, frantically trying to get the check-in back on track, "maybe you could tell us something about what's coming up in tonight's show?"

"Oh, I don't think so, Jon," he said coolly. "I don't think I should go making plans with somebody who can't be trusted to keep them."

And that was all Jon was going to get out of him, apparently. He gave the camera an awkward smile. "Well, uh, Stephen Colbert, everybody," he said, spreading his hands helplessly. "And here it is, your moment of zen."

He stuck around after the wrap-up to watch Stephen's show from his office, slightly worried there might be another emotional implosion on the cards. It appeared, though, he was either flattering himself or giving Stephen too little credit, since the show went off without an obvious hitch, Stephen's lingering irritation only giving his performance a little extra zing. There was a rant about socialised healthcare being a sinister attempt to bypass the sacred bond of trust and care between boss and employee when it came to sprained ankles, but really that was par for the course aside from the brief digression into obligations to keep pizza dates.

Also, Jon could have done without the reminder that he'd once been Stephen's direct superior and still held something of a senior position. Stephen was already the boy who cried wolf when it came to accusing him of sexual harassment - God knew how he'd take a genuine unwanted advance.

Not that Jon was thinking of making any advances.

Was he?

Stephen did nothing for his efforts at resolve by ending the show on a duet with his musical guest. At least when it came to his regular punditry there was the stark reminder of his politics to offset the natural magnetism. When he set that aside in favour of his true calling as entertainer, it was a whole lot harder to ignore his bright-eyed, bubbly charm. _Damn_ , he was cute - and Jon would be lying if he tried to pretend that the teasing wink and coy lip-bite he gave the audience at the end of the show didn't cause him a little bit of a flutter.

He thumped his head down on the desk. Maybe he could just hide away in here until this whole sexual identity crisis went away. Or for the remainder of his natural lifespan. One of the two.

As far as plans of action went, this one was pretty tempting, but it did have its drawbacks. As he discovered when Stephen threw the door open and stormed dramatically into the office.

"Ha! So this is where you've been hiding," he said.

"This is my office, Stephen," Jon reminded him.

"So you _say_!" He slammed his hands down on the desk to glare at Jon. "But how can I trust anything out of your lying mouth? You _claim_ that you were too busy to have dinner with me last week, but where were you really? I demand answers."

Jon came to a decision. "You know, Stephen, you're right," he admitted with a sigh. "I _did_ lie to you about being busy last weekend."

"I'm _right_?" His lip quivered in horrified dismay.

Jon covered one of Stephen's hands with his, causing the look of nervous bewilderment to redirect downwards. "I... had some things I needed to think about," he said. "And I was... scared to see you, I guess, because I knew you'd probably see through me."

Stephen quirked an eyebrow at that. "Well... it is true you can't just take me out to dinner and then expect me not to penetrate you," he allowed. The eyebrow intensified. "You know I don't approve of thinking, Jon," he said. "That only leads to reasoning, and then where would we be? Making sensible, rational decisions based on facts! Go with your gut, that's what I say."

"Yeah," he said. "I guess I should."

He rose up from his chair, leaning forward over the desk so they were face to face. Then, trembling slightly, he raised his hand to cup the side of Stephen's jaw, feeling the pulse, the warmth, the subtle prickle of stubble under his thumb that wasn't visible under the stage make-up.

He very gently pressed his lips to Stephen's; they were almost shockingly soft, and slackly parted in what might have been welcome or surprise. He felt the warm tingle in his lips down through his groin right to his toes.

He realised that his eyes had fallen closed, and opened them as he drew back reluctantly.

Stephen hadn't moved. At all. He might as well have been his own waxwork. Jon started to panic.

"Uh, Stephen, I-"

Stephen vaulted over the desk with startling athletic ease, slamming Jon back into his chair to wind up sitting in his lap, and immediately started making a thorough attempt to get acquainted with his tonsils. Jon barely had a chance to catch his breath or work out where to put his hands, because Stephen's were roaming everywhere.

Not that he was at all complaining. Fuck, he'd almost forgotten what this was like: the melting heat, the quiet gasps, the hot contact of skin on skin. The masculine body was new, but in the same electric way that anyone was new, and it was _Stephen_ , Stephen's broad shoulders under that silky soft suit jacket, Stephen's stubble rubbing up against his jaw, Stephen's slightly soft middle under his squeezing hands.

Stephen's dextrous fingers, groping for the zipper of his-

Fuck. Office, office, still in the office, he frantically reminded the small fraction of his brain that was still located somewhere above the waist. Late enough that no one was around? No, no, be a rational adult.

Fuck, Stephen was right, rationality really sucked.

He gently, and not without some difficulty, extricated himself. "Stephen. Stephen. Stephen," he said, in between the kisses stealing his breath. He gripped Stephen's wrist to lift his hand away from its intimate location, trying not to follow it with his hips, and swallowed as the fingers flexed in his grip as if seeking a way back. "Can you just stop that a minute, please?"

Stephen slipped down from his lap at once and backed away, wrapping his arms around himself and looking young and uncertain with his hair all dishevelled and his suit rumpled. "I'm sorry. I've misunderstood," he said, shoulders hunched as if waiting for a blow.

Jon hastily held up his hands. "No! No misunderstanding here," he insisted. "I just need you to slow it down a little."

"I understand," Stephen said solemnly. "Fight it, Jon! You can do it. It's not too late for you to hold onto your straightness."

Jon sighed a little, but also couldn't help but wonder what kind of miserable denial-filled encounters Stephen might have had in his past. "Stephen, no," he said. "I'm not saying I don't want to do this. I'm just saying... not right here in my office where anyone could come in, okay?"

"Oh." He perked up a little, pointing over his shoulder. "There's a supply closet just-"

"Not anywhere at work," he said hastily, because, God help him, that idea had sounded briefly tempting. "If we're going to do this, we're going to do this in a bed like civilised people." Or on a couch, or in a shower, or maybe up against a bedroom wall; he wasn't _that_ fussy about the form his civilisation took.

"My bedroom has a bed, Jon," Stephen volunteered.

So did his, and it was much closer - but sadly, rationality had now forced enough blood back into the right head to start making valid points. He sighed again, this time in disappointment. "Stephen, much as I would love to go home with you tonight - and I really, really would - it's late and we both have to work tomorrow." Besides, if he was honest with himself, he was probably going to need some more private time to freak out before this went any further.

"Friday night," he said decisively. "We'll go out on a dinner date to a nice restaurant, and then we can decide if we want to..." he flailed at the idea of articulating what he was proposing, and oh, hello, there was the first hint of that freakout that he'd been planning, "...move on from there," he finished.

"You're asking me out on a date?" Stephen asked, wide-eyed and flustered as a teenage girl invited to the prom, and it occurred to Jon that going out for a nice dinner and drinks with a man might be a bigger novelty to him than the prospect of actual sex. The idea made him ache.

"Anywhere you want," he promised, resolved to give him as much romantic ambience as two moderately famous men could get away with in public without making the tabloid gossip pages. Then he considered Stephen's tastes and ideas of practicality. "That I can afford," he amended. He gave Stephen a brief peck on the lips.

The only weird thing about kissing Stephen was that it didn't feel weird at all.

Stephen cupped the sides of his face to draw him back for a more lingering kiss, met his eyes with a meltingly soft gaze, and then said: "Can we make out in your office some more before then?" He grinned hopefully.

Jon knew he really should draw a firm line against that kind of thing right here and now before it got them both in trouble later.

"Sure," he said.

#

The wait for Friday passed in a blur of panicky anticipation that was twenty times the mild case of nerves he'd felt before his failed date with Rachel. Jon could swear that between them he and Stephen managed to slip about fifty accidental gay sex innuendoes into the week's shows and tosses - though the fact nobody seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary probably said something.

Stephen appeared to have decided he had licence to come by multiple times a day and molest Jon in his office, which he probably should have protested but wasn't very inclined to. At least Stephen's behaviour was so erratic at the best of times that nobody paid much attention to changing patterns. Or risked barging into the office to interrupt in case they got caught up in hostage negotiations or something.

The main negotiations actually occurring were repeated attempts to convince Stephen that yes, his attentions _were_ enthusiastically wanted, just not actually in his pants right here right now. Despite all evidence of a dissenting vote from the pants region. Stephen had all the self-restraint of a spoiled kid with a big pile of Halloween candy, and boy, it had been a long time since Jon had felt like anybody's stash of Halloween candy.

At least it meant he'd gotten over the 'Am I really sure I can be attracted to a guy?' question real quick, leaving his brain free to generate a million other worries instead. By the time the big date loomed ahead of him on Friday, he was such a twisted knot of anxiety that he broke his vow not to buy more cigarettes.

And yet the roaring panic faded when he arrived at the restaurant and realised that date or not, fancy meal and smart clothes or not, Stephen was still _Stephen_ , the same guy that he'd had all those casual pizza evenings with, that he'd shared an anchor's desk with and worked beside for years. Just with an extra edge of bright delight bubbling under the surface, the odd sweetly shy or downright lustful look across the table when their feet brushed or one of them alluded to their after-dinner plans. Jon was grateful nobody was paying them much attention, since Stephen's idea of subtlety was to wink every time he mentioned going back to Jon's for 'coffee'. Even while in the middle of drinking a cup of coffee.

Jon watched him guilelessly lick milk foam off his lips, and wondered if allowing Stephen to drag him off into the restrooms would really be so wrong.

The cab ride back to his apartment passed in a state of a buzzing, restless anticipation that was more than nerves. When he let them in through the door, though, insecurity returned. Oh, God, what if he was terrible at this? It had taken him decades to feel halfway confident with women, and this was new territory. Stephen made a very poor secret of his attraction to movie stars with perfect abs - surely he could only be disappointed by Jon's body. What if-

Stephen pounced on him from behind before the door was even fully closed, pressing nuzzling kisses to the back of his neck and slipping his hands into the front pockets of Jon's pants.

"Uh, okay," Jon said, helpless to avoid chuckling a little. They stumble-walked through the apartment together until the bedroom, where Stephen released him long enough to let him turn around, and then pushed him backward down onto the bed.

As Stephen climbed on top of him and resumed the neck kissing, unbuttoning Jon's shirt on his way down, Jon started to feel the first hints of panic stir again. Horizontal and undressing - okay, those were firsts. Maybe it was time to call for a slowdown. After all, he was still pretty much brand new to this, and Stephen was-

Currently in the process of pressing a trail of frantic kisses down his stomach, murmuring, "Please, please, please," with almost worshipful desperation. As he made short work of shoving Jon's pants and boxers both down past his hips, Jon reflected that there was also, probably, something to be said for just leaping straight in without giving himself time to overthink.

And then Stephen gave him an enthusiastic lick, and he forgot how thinking worked at all.

#

A breathless time later, and Jon still lay awake, but with the reassuring haze of encroaching sleep settling in. Stephen, he'd been entirely unsurprised to find, was a shameless cuddler, wrapped around his body in limp, exhausted bliss as his fingers traced trails through Jon's chest hair.

"You're not allowed to take it back now," he said sleepily. "You're all mine, forever."

"Okay," Jon said. Maybe he'd have his freakout tomorrow morning; he'd probably have a hundred more before this relationship even began to get off of the ground. Right now, though, it just felt mighty good to be _someone's_.

The last thing he was conscious of before he drifted off was the sound of Stephen sighing his name right beside his ear, his arms tightening to tug Jon even closer.


End file.
